Venting Frustrations
by lexkixass
Summary: Neji's in the hospital -again- and Sakura's furious at him for it -again-.  / Teaser: By the time she reached her destination in the ward reserved for injured ANBU, Sakura could almost feel steam escaping her ears.


**Venting Frustrations**

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One more.

Just _one_ more, _one bloody more_, and she was going to scream.

Staff and patients alike took one look at the quietly raging mednin and all but dove out of the way. One quick-witted orderly quickly pulled a wheelchair-bound patient into a broom closet rather than chance that she might accidentally barrel over them.

Sakura ignored everything and everyone. She was in workaholic mode, her long pink hair twisted up in a knot and fixed in place with a pair of pens. Red scrubs dulled in color by many washings still provided a sharp contrast to the pristine white lab coat that flapped and snapped like a cape behind her. Fire blazed in her dark green eyes, and temper was in every long step she took. Only training and impeccable chakra control prevented her feet from cracking the linoleum floors - or worse.

She eschewed the elevators for the stairs, knowing if she stayed still for too long she would damage something. But by the time she reached her destination in the ward reserved for injured ANBU, she could almost feel steam escaping her ears.

The chart with its list of injuries flashed through her mind. Blunt force trauma to the mid-torso, causing internal bruising and bleeding. Lacerations on the limbs varying from scant millimeters to up to two centimeters deep. Puncture wounds up to four centimeters deep. Torn muscles all over but primarily in the back and shoulders. Broken bones: ribs (left, numbers four through seven, fractured), kneecap (right, cracked), foot bones (right, metatarsus and first dorsal interosseous, crushed).

"_**Y**__**OU!**__**!**_" she screamed as she slammed the door open. "WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT'S HOLY AND SACRED WERE YOU _THINKING_."

Neji looked at her with remarkable aplomb for sporting a myriad of bandages and a cast. "Good morning to you too, Haruno," he said calmly, and swung his leg over the edge of the bed.

Irate at his calm, she closed the door (having to first wrench the doorknob free from the wall) with a gentleness that caused cracks to spiderweb outward from the door frame. "You get your ass back in that bed, buster, or so help me, I'll break that other leg." She punctuated the threat with a poke to his chest that made him wince.

_Now_ the irritation flowed into his white eyes, though he kept his tone level and rational. "I'm not in critical condition. I'm conscious, I'm healing, and I don't need this bed."

"Says whom?" she demanded. Without waiting for his answer, she put both hands on his smock-covered chest and closed her eyes. His breath hitched when she flowed her chakra into his body through the various tenketsu. "You still have massive bruising on your liver, stomach, and intestines, nevermind all of the interconnected muscles. Just because it's not visible on the skin doesn't mean it's not there. Your chakra is still very low. And then there are still the obvious broken bones." She retracted her chakra slowly so as to not cause him discomfort. However much she wanted to snap the chakra back out of spite, she was too much a professional to let her emotions override her, and she cared too much about him to willingly hurt him when he was already in pain. Pride and years of conditioning wouldn't let him show it, but that connection had allowed her to feel it. "You are _not_ heading home to train," she stated, lifting her head to look at his face. "You are keeping your fine ass here, in bed, until you've been properly released."

Perfectly defined eyebrows, marred only by a thick scar-line through the left one, rose. "Excuse me?" he asked with dubious inflection.

"What part did you mishear?" she snapped.

"The part about my fine ass."

She stopped abruptly, her eyes going huge and her mouth forming a perfect "o". Color flushed her face when her memory confirmed that yes, she _did_ just say that. Out loud. To him. "S-sorry," mumbled.

She kept her gaze firmly down. He rolled his eyes heavenward. "You're hardly the first to comment, and will undoubtedly not be the last," he said. He put his hands over hers to pull them away, smiling inwardly when her fingers curled over his. "Be as it may, I'm leaving-"

"Don't even _try_," she interrupted, her eyes back on his and warning in every line of her body. The blush was quickly leaving as temper darkened those jade eyes to malachite. She didn't toss out idle threats.

"I'm leaving," he repeated, "and you're coming with me."

Then again, neither did he.

"Leaving?" She barked out a hopeless laugh. "Neji, did you get hit on the head on your last mission in addition to everything else that happened to you? I can't leave here; I've got too much work to do! Besides taking care of your _stupid_ ass-"

"Wasn't it my fine ass a few moments ago?"

"-because you can't be arsed to exercise caution and common sense on a mission like any other rational human being, I _do_ have other patients to see, charts to update, a pediatric ward to oversee, medics to train, meetings to go to, and sundry other matters that must be handled." She was panting at the end of the rush of words owing to her frazzled nerves. She held his hands in vice-like grips, her knuckles white. "I don't _care_ that you're in ANBU and the general survival rate for those missions is _maybe_ thirty percent. You still spend much too much time in the hospital. Your body can't keep enduring this kind of abuse. Whatever Gai-sensei and Lee-san say. Therefore, as your doctor, I say this: You. Are. Not. Going. Anywhere."

Neji regarded her for several moments. "Sakura, when was the last time you slept?" he asked, his tone almost bored.

The question threw her off. "Wh-What?"

"When was the last time you slept?" he repeated patiently.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Answer mine, I'll answer yours."

"I..." Her voice trailed off as she wracked her brain. Her hands loosened some. There had been that meeting to discuss renovations and possible expansion of the pediatrics wing, and Shishou had given her a new box of scrolls detailing ailments of the lungs and treatments for them for her to learn, then the few hours she had spent arranging schedules for the next two weeks as her best nurse was still out on maternity leave, in addition to checking on her current patients and meeting new ones. (She certainly was on a first-name basis of Gai-sensei's newest crop of rookies.) "It doesn't matter-"

"Yes, it does." His tone was quiet but also cutting and firm. "You're working yourself to collapse. Again. Which is why Tsunade-sama has authorized the pair of us two weeks' vacation, anywhere we want, so long as two conditions were met: that we left Konoha, and that we did no training whatsoever. We are to rest, relax, and recharge."

She boggled at him. "Shishou authorized this?"

Actually, it had been an order which he could disobey on pain of being written up, but Sakura didn't need to know that. "Yes."

"Effective when?"

"Now. Hokage-sama has already cleared me for discharge."

"You're still in a cast."

"Which is why I'm glad you came in. I need to get back to the compound to pack, and I thought that you would like to help me," he returned.

It was her turn to briefly narrow her eyes. Then a smile of such gentle viciousness bloomed that the hairs on the back of his neck rose.

"I'd be _moooooore_ than happy to, Taichou," she crooned, leaning in until their noses almost touched, looking at him with eyes half-closed. She pulled her hands free, then patted his cheek lovingly. "Stay here. I'll be back with your wheelchair."

He blanched. "Wait, Haruno-"

/end


End file.
